The Survivor
by Jezrana
Summary: My response to the death in Order of the Phoenix. As in, here be massive spoilers, don't read it unless you've read the book or don't mind knowing who dies.


Author's Note: While I am personally a member of the "Sirius is not really dead" club, I still felt the need to write this. We see Harry's reaction in the books so clearly, but what about the one person who was probably even MORE devastated at losing Sirius? Poor, poor Moony...I'll have to write him some cuddly fics to make up for this one...  
  
The Survivor  
  
The sun was already coming up when Remus Lupin stumbled back into his small, shabby cottage, but for all he knew it could still have been pitch dark outside. It could have been snowing in the middle of the early summer warmth, it could have been raining fire from the sky, and he would not have noticed or cared.  
  
Moving like a sleepwalker, he stumbled over to the worn sofa and collapsed onto it, staring blankly ahead. He felt something wet on his hands and dimly realized that he'd been digging his nails into his palms so hard that they were bleeding, but he couldn't seem to feel any pain. The wounds didn't seem real. The room around him didn't seem real. Nothing seemed real, least of all the words, his own words, that kept echoing through his head as he futilely tried to make them make sense.  
  
"There's nothing you can do, Harry...nothing...He's gone...He can't come back, Harry, because-"  
  
He wanted to scream, but he couldn't seem to open his mouth. He wanted to weep, but his eyes were dry. Most of all, he wanted this to be untrue. He wanted to suddenly feel a hand on his shoulder, turn and look up into Sirius's face. He wanted to go back to Grimmauld Place, open the door, and hear Sirius's laughter as he greeted him. If he sat here for long enough, wanting it badly enough, surely that would happen.  
  
No, that wasn't what he wanted at all. He didn't want Sirius to be alive...he wanted to be dead with him. He wanted to leave all this behind, throw off his body like an old cloak, and find Sirius, James, and Lily waiting for him on the other side. Why in God's name should he be alive now, if they were all gone?  
  
The answers came, unbidden, as he had known they would. Harry and his friends. The Order. Celina and Alexandra, who still didn't know-and oh, God, they were going to have to be told, and he was going to have to be there, they would need him. One heartbreaking addition had been made to the list of people he loved who were dead, but the list of those still living was still too long for him to turn his back on them.  
  
His eyes fell on one of the few pictures on the small, rickety table in the middle of the room. His seventeen-year old self grinned shyly back at him, his arm slung around the shoulders of an unfairly handsome and charismatic looking Sirius, who was hugging him back with one arm and, with the other, putting a playful headlock on James, who in turn had his arm around Peter while his free hand did its best to mess up Sirius's hair, which, of course, only made him look cooler. They all looked so young and innocent, so full of life. You'd never guess that in less than twenty-five years, one of them would have died protecting his wife and son, betrayed by another, or that a third would suffer the traitor's rightful punishment for twelve years and then finally earn a slim chance at regaining his life, only to-  
  
He squeezed his eyes shut, overcome by a fresh wave of pain and disbelief. "Sirius..." A wail in his heart, escaping his lips as a ragged whisper. How could any of this have happened? James dead, Peter as good as dead to them, and now Sirius-how was it that, of all of them, he had been the one to survive? And how could he still be capable of feeling this much pain? How had the last fourteen years left him with any room for new pain in his heart? How many times could one heart break before it finally, mercifully, stopped feeling anything at all?  
  
The tears were coming now. He didn't try to stop them. Dropping his head into his hands, Remus Lupin, Moony, the last of the Marauders, wept. For his friends, for himself, for an entire world where things like this could happen and pain like this could be felt, he wept. He wept until the storm in his heart had raged itself out.  
  
Finally he rose, scooped up his wand from where it had fallen on the threadbare carpet, and left the house. His scars, old and new, still throbbed, but the fight was not over, and he had to get up and prepare for battle once more.  
  
In Memoriam  
  
Marauders Forever  
  
A.N: (flattens herself against the computer screen trying to get in it so that she can hug Remus) 


End file.
